You know, I played the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game referred to in the text; at that point, I was relatively young, so even if we had a copy of the book in the house, I hadn’t picked it up yet. Wouldn’t for years, actually. I kept trying and failing to get into it: I feel like I’d probably only properly appreciate it if I went back to it now. So anyway, I kept at it, and kept failing again and again to do the one single course of action that would help me progress to the next stage. Literally, I’m pretty sure I tried just about everything bar actually laying down in front of the bulldozer. I never did get there.

Much in the same vein, when I was in middle school, the computers were built with an edition of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. I hung around the computer room a lot, so naturally, I played it whenever I got a chance. This would have been completely fine, except the game was supposed to come with a companion book that provided details and clues and evidence to go along with the story to help kids puzzle through it. For whatever reason, even though it was on literally every computer, we did not have those books. So again, I constantly tried every option but the right one, day after day getting frustrated and quitting only to try again.

Eventually, I either graduated or stopped trying: I don’t really remember which.

Aarseth explains that in an ergodic text like interactive fiction, “intrigue
is directed against the user, who must figure out for herself what is going on”

Yeah, I’m very, very bad at this. Rather than focusing on an online narrative, I’m making the call to focus more on games and the increasingly popular approach to an open world concept in a narrative driven story. I want to say I love it, honestly; I get the appeal, and the intrigue, to picking up clues in the ‘text’ and working based off of that. The problem is, frankly, I suck at that – at least to an extent.

Let’s take for example the Legend of Zelda series. Way back in the day, when I picked up Ocarina of Time when it came out on the Nintendo 64. And by picked up, I mean my mom’s friend bought it over because he was stuck at the beginning of the game. This being a dungeon on the inside of a massive, living tree, now full of malevolent spiders and fun things like that. He’d explored every area he could, but couldn’t seem to progress any further with it. There was this great big web in the center of the tree, and from other experiences in the dungeon, he assumed he was supposed to use a stick lit by one of the torches to bypass it. Of course, it was on the floor, and there was no way to press the stick to the floor, and rolling via dodge just put the stick out. So, he was at a loss, and bored with both the system and the game as a result.

I’d say maybe I was better with these things when I was a kid, but I wasn’t, really: I knew falling could hurt me. But I saw a health item, a heart, floating out in the middle of space just outside of reach of the highest place the character could climb. So, I took a leap of faith, and lo and behold, through that clue, I was able to unlock a new area.

In the newest game, Breath of the Wild, I was right back to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy all over again. You start out on a wide expanse of grass, and you need a glider to go anywhere else. To get the glider, you need to talk to an old man. For the old man to give it to you, you need to collect five artifacts. The first one was easy, right nearby! – then for the others you had to try and mark them from a high tower, and they may or may not be accessible from where you’re currently stationed because there’s really no way to know that. So, you mark them and wander around. You fall off the island about seventeen times. Random enemies keep murdering you. You keep flinging your weapon instead of swinging it because for some reason there’s a button command for that, so you die again trying to rush into the enemy hoard to get your weapon back. Eventually you get a little tougher and you can hold your own – yay! – but where’s that dungeon? What is the point of this abandoned building? Why do you keep finding peppers? They keep saying to cook things, but anytime you try to toss anything into the fire, it just burns up or sits there in the fire until you burn yourself trying to pick it up because you think “wow, maybe it cooked!”, but it didn’t. You think maybe a magnet item will help you. You drop a boulder on yourself and die, again. Your friend finally tells you you’re supposed to cook a certain number of these in order to temporarily go into an icy area without dying shortly after the fact of hypothermia. That’s great, except you still keep setting yourself on fire when you’re trying to cook, and eventually you get mad and go play Pokemon again instead.

“Montfort notes there is no real role to play, only an existing history that waits to be
discovered. The player character can be steered through the station to
recover his memory. But the interactor does little more than steer and
sense. The author, not the player, is the one who decides when the player
will cry, the one who defines all the details of the player character’s
earlier and more expressive actions and reactions.”

This is true of Breath of the Wild, of most video games! That’s literally what the game is about! I’d love to know his goddamn history if I could stop killing him long enough to get anywhere!!

“Hence one of the more challenging features of early interactive fiction: the reader is
given a character identity but then forced to behave in a way that makes
little sense for that character.”

This is still true, by the way. Link has no dialogue. He just woke up in a cave and we are controlling him and going on this journey. Why the hell is he eating peppers to go stomping through the snow instead of I don’t know, skinning one of the animals he can hunt down? Or finding some sort of magical venue to do it? If the old man can make me clothes to warm me up, which is apparently also a possibility if I can figure out this weirdo recipe that’s nostalgic for him, but why would Link do that and how would he know that??

I am all about intrigue, and I really want to be able to enjoy Breath of the Wild, and games like it – after all, this seems to be becoming a trend, these beautiful and awe inspiring worlds with supposedly unlimited options which ultimately all end up killing me – but intrigue can only get a person so far. (Also, why am I so bad at this? Why?)

For this post, I’m going to go ahead and touch on two major instances of feminist film making through the six principles Hidalgo details in her work. However, rather than focus on a live action film, I’m instead going to shift my focus to two animated series: Steven Universe and Dreamworks reinterpretation of 80’s icon, She-Ra.

(If you aren’t aware of either of these shows, now is the time to get into them: Steven Universe finished earlier this spring, although you may encounter a pay wall to access later seasons [and overall it is the longer show, as it is a bit of a slow burn to start]. She-Ra is available on Netflix, and the final season will air in the very near future. Both are very much worth a watch.)

“1. Foster Diversity in Front of and Behind the Camera:
Sullivan and Porter explain that the key principle of postmodern ethics is the call to
respect difference. For feminist filmmaking, that call goes even further by asking
filmmakers to foster difference by hiring crewmembers of diverse backgrounds in
terms of gender, race, and sexuality. The same applies to those in front of our
cameras. “

Diversity in front of and behind the camera: animation poses an interesting take on this, given that there are the characters we see on screen as opposed to the people who voice them behind the scenes. So let’s take a glance at graphics that display both aspects of the main characters that comprise both of these shows.

She-Ra – A selection of the cast

She-Ra Season 4 Addition – Double Trouble

Steven Universe – Prominent Characters Identifying as She/Her

Already, the cast is diverse, and moreover, both shows have made a concentrated effort to display various body types, skin tones, and sexualities in front of the camera. Steven Universe, for instance, featured a same sex kiss, which – minor spoilers – eventually led up to a same sex wedding, has the presence of several non-binary characters identifying as ‘they/them’, and none of this is treated as novel or unusual. Rather, it is just part of the story, allowed to stand as it is. She-Ra likewise features a married homosexual couple, intensely close female bonds which may or may not prove to be queer in nature in the final season, and actually cast a non-binary individual to act as their own non-binary character, Double Trouble – which should not be a novel thing, frankly, but as a non-binary individual myself, I was enthused at the casting.

As for behind the camera? Both production crews are known to have diverse, delightfully queer crews working on them, but let’s highlight the driving forces behind both shows on a creative front. First, Rebecca Sugar, the creator of Steven Universe (who also did work on Adventure Time – another show that got a lot of hype for being progressive!). Like me, they are also a non-binary, bisexual individual, and they have no problem speaking to that experience in the industry, and they put forth their best efforts to challenge and overcome the ‘taboo’ when it comes to queer dynamics in children’s shows. Then there is Noelle Stevenson, the creator of She-Ra, who is also queer as hell and married to another animator in basically the coolest gay power couple ever. They foster ridiculous cats and they’re lovely. Their crews reflect their attitudes: they want to be inclusive, and they want to give every child someone to look up to, and the love they have for their enterprises is palpable and fabulous.

“2. Engage in an Ethics of Interdependence with Crewmembers
Royster and Kirsch assert that ‘feminist rhetorical scholarship … is being done
quite regularly by colleagues working together rather than alone'”

I read an interview where Jacob Tobia, who portrays Double Trouble, read for the character during the audition. They stepped up, nervous as hell… only to realize the people listening from the other side of the wall were all as queer as they were. Rather than nervous, they felt invigorated, and the interviews they did later with Noelle are a testament to the dynamic creator and actor shared. People can say what they want about the shows promoting SJWs and safe spaces: the fact is, no one looked down on anyone in the process on making this show.

“3. Engage in an Ethics of Interdependence with Documentary Participants
One of the key questions when it comes to research in Rhetoric and Composition is
how the relationship with participants should unfold. Sullivan and Porter suggest
that we ‘ontribute something to the betterment of the group or community we are
studying.'”

Let’s replace ‘Documentary Participants’ with ‘fanbase’. I’m more familiar with Noelle’s habits as I’ve been following her longer, but she regularly engages with fans, whether through Twitter or Instagram or even Reddit. She retweets pictures of cosplayers and fanart. She answers questions. She gives insight into the processes behind the show, leading to transparency and encouraging fan thoughts and involvement. Many of the people behind the show are the same, doing their best to foster a positive, considerate fan community. Steve Universe has had some more toxic fans, but that does not means those fans are not better off for the show having existing.

“4. Practice Mentorship
As Jacqui Miller reports, early women directors mentored fellow women. Silent film
director Lois Weber ‘nurtured the career of women technicians,’ while in Arzner’s
case, ‘[i]t was film cutter, Nan Heron who facilitated her promotion to script girl
and editor, while Arzner in turn taught actress Bebe Daniels editing.'”

Noelle Stevenson has gone on record stating, “Absolutely every show that has made strides in LGBT representation makes it easier for shows that come after. So we owe a huge debt to Steven Universe for showing that you can have a cast of majority women, a bigger mythology, a space-opera epic feel, and explicit LGBT themes. You can point to that and say, ‘This can appeal to audiences. Trust me, I can make this work.'” I think paving the way in a genre in recent years to allow Noelle’s vision to be given the light of day counts, don’t you?

“5. Practice Strategic Contemplation
Royster and Kirsch discuss strategic contemplation as an approach to feminist
historical research. They explain, ‘[S]trategic contemplation involves engaging in a
dialogue, in an exchange, with the women who are our rhetorical subjects'”

I’m just going to point enthusiastically to the stuff up above and hope that covers the bases here: neither show was writing out of their asses, and frankly, it’s still shocking that we have made more strides in what is considered children’s animation as far as representation on camera and behind the scenes is concerned than mainstream media. Just, wow.

(Also, here’s the title. Also, Catra is the best. Go watch She-Ra.)

“interpellation occurs when a person connects with a media text: when we enjoy a magazine or TV show, for example, this uncritical consumption means that the text has interpellated us into a certain set of assumptions, and caused us to tacitly accept a particular approach to the world.” (Gauntlett, 2002: 27)

This is going to come of as supremely ironic given the nature of my final project, but frankly, fuck you interpellation. Fuck you and your MMOs and all the other shit that goes with it.

I’m glad people like Wilde Cunningham can find some solace through games like Second Life. Don’t get me wrong. I see the value in it. However, and forgive me for my bias coming out, in their case, there is a trained professional there to help them mediate the amount of time they spend there, and frankly, maybe the slow connection speed they endured wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

My mother was disabled, physically – she had emotional problems as well, but she was intelligent and wonderful and acutely aware of the world around her. She had fallen at work when I was a kid, and after a long recovery (where doctors repeatedly told her she had to move more than she was), she remained unable to return to work and remained on disability for the remainder of her life.

She’d always been a fan of fandom things, anime and cartoons and every nerdy thing you can think of honestly. After all, she met my father at a convention in the early 80’s, with him in a rudimentary cosplay and all. So it was no wonder she fell into those things hard. Even if sometimes it got to be a little awkward, as a young teen, generally my mom and I liked the same things (although her smut ruined Snape for me forever).

Then I made the ill-fated mistake of trying World of Warcraft for a week. The second day or so, innocently, I told my mom she should give it a try, it was sort of neat. I got bored by the end of my free trial. It was too repetitive for me, and I was more fond of something that had a plot and an ending than something that went on forever.

My mother, on the other hand, played it more or less until she died in 2014. Obsessively. At all hours of the day and night. All of her friends were online. She stopped even trying to take care of herself, wearing the same bathrobe for weeks at a time. She lost any and all concept of time, and didn’t seem to realize when I was or wasn’t in the apartment. She started smoking again for the first time in years, packs a day, and coupled with the black mold she didn’t realize was growing in her closet, she developed cystic fibrosis so potent, she needed a lung transplant she was too weak to receive.

I was a teenager, and a teenager that ended up having to strike out on my own because I was incapable of parenting my parent. I did not have the capacity, and I should never have been put in that position. I am still angry, and I’m sorry, but even to read a “heartfelt” story like this leaves a bitter taste on my tongue. I played Animal Crossing as an escape during a hard time, but that never left me incapable of listening to my fiancee. That never kept me from hugging my cat, or reaching out to my friends. There are not enough protections to keep vulnerable people from passively accepting this world as their normal, and nothing can convince me otherwise.

This is more personal than analytical, probably. Still, it felt important for me to say.

Again, I’m sort of shamelessly mashing some of the prompts together. I found myself pondering something as I was reading through the Pepe/Kek articles (by Spencer and the SPLC respectively). I would not say it reached the same heights as the alt-right’s use of Pepe, but I saw a lot of shades of an internet phenomena that had taken place about a year prior: Twitch Plays Pokemon’s run through of Pokemon Red. I have no concrete way of proving the two events are related, but the thematic similarities are downright uncanny.

Know Your Meme addresses this whole ordeal in a general sense: to give some idea of what Twitch Plays Pokemon was about, here is their overview of the 2014 event: “Twitch Plays Pokémon [was] a live-stream hosted by the video-streaming platform Twitch in which any member of the site [could] participate in a massively multiplayer online co-op version of Nintendo’s series of Pokémon games, starting with Pokémon Red, by inputting various commands in chat.” This does not really capture the madness that was this livestream: I came into it a bit late in the game as an observer, tantalized by friends and Tumblr posts, and by that point, the lore was already in full swing.

As one can imagine, the fact that any member of the site could participate meant that the more popular the livestream was, the more unplayable it became. Players grappled with the simplest of obstacles. The main character would loop in circle after circle, drop items, unintentionally release Pokemon, and any and all nicknames were just gibberish. Still, people took that chaos that they themselves were creating and made everything into some grander. Every gibberish name took on deeper meaning. Personas were developed. In-jokes. And beyond that, overtones of an entire religious mythos began to fall into place. A huge cog in that was the Helix Fossil, an item that could not be discarded – only revived Jurassic Park style later in the game. It was constantly selected to no end by the “hivemind” (the mass of players with their will acting as one), and so the main character was assumed to be consulting the Helix Fossil for guidance. Then, as this article details, things took a turn:

“Since Twitch Plays Pokémon was consulting the Helix so often, the community came to attribute positive developments to its influence. After several days of this, the Helix was promoted from ‘magic advice giver’ to ‘messiah,’ which is certainly a reasonable leap to make. Cries of ‘Praise Helix!’ arose from the chat whenever things went well, and it became so integral to the adventure that some people thought bringing the fossil to the Pokémon Laboratory was more important than actually beating the game. After 11 straight days of lugging around a useless rock, Twitch Plays Pokémon reached the lab and earned its Omanyte. He was proclaimed Lord Helix, god of anarchy, and there was much rejoicing.”

It is worth noting that to get past the more challenging sections of the game and make true progress, a democracy mode was instituted: this meant that the most requested action within spans of ten seconds would be the action that the character would take. However, there were means to switch democracy mode to anarchy mode, the play style reference above: without fail, the players constantly switched back to the will of Lord Helix, or anarchy mode. Moreover, other Pokemon came to play key roles in this mythological structure. A pidgeot, a common bird Pokemon that proved resilient enough not to be released by accident like many others, came to be known as “Bird Jesus”. Another Pokemon came to be known as a False Prophet, loyal to the other fossil players hadn’t selected.

All the while I was reading those articles about Kek/Pepe and Trump, I couldn’t help thinking back to this entire ordeal. “Kek can be both a big joke to pull on liberals and a reflection of the Alt-Right’s own self-image as serious agents of chaos in modern society.” No, this did not involve politics: given the timeline and the overlapping fanbase with Reddit, though, I can’t help but wonder if one thing led to the other, especially given the wide reach Twitch Plays Pokemon had, appearing on various news networks, clothing, artwork, and more. “More importantly, Kek was portrayed as a bringer of chaos and darkness, which happened to fit perfectly with the Alt-Right’s self image as being primarily devoted to destroying the existing world order, ” or anarchy. We’re right back to the prevailing message of the Helix Fossil.

To take it one step further, Spencer refers to a particular phenomenon that is prevalent with those utilizing Pepe for supposed political gain:

“From there, the same 4channers have found other strange frog connections, and gotten into the habit of making an unusual kind of bet. When someone posts a message or picture on a 4chan thread, their entry is marked with a multiple-digit, randomly-generated number in the comment thread, like a personal UPC. In other words, no one knows what the number will be beforehand. So Pepe enthusiasts started betting that posts featuring Pepe would end in double digits. When those posts did in fact end in double digits, the community believed to have found its greatest validation yet. It was as if the internet was saying yes, meme magic exists, and the electronic medium is standing by to spread the message that Donald Trump should be president.”

So let’s play a game change some word choices here.

Helix enthusiasts started betting that the character would select the fossil. When he did in fact select it, the community believe to have found its greatest validation yet. It was as if the game was saying yes, meme magic exists, and the Helix fossil is standing by to spread the message of anarchy. Referring back to the meme magic page on KnowYourMeme, the origins are noted to be around 2014, when Twitch Plays Pokemon was in play. No reference is made to it on the KnowYourMeme page, but especially when the primary description evoked egregore, which all but refers directly to the idea of a hivemind, I can’t help but think that Twitch Plays Pokemon is a missing link in the chain that led to Pepe/Kek down the line.

Bear with me as this takes a few rambling curves: remediation was the concept that captivated me the most this week, so I’m going to be focusing heavily on that. I will bring up some examples of remediation to discuss, and also discuss some ways I thought Bolter and Grusin’s article might benefit from a contemporary re-visit.

I understand the point of the article… although admittedly, I found myself sighing and somewhat shaking my head as they continually referred to Doom and Myst as more or less the pinnacle of gaming. Not that they weren’t for the time! I’m not downplaying the impact those games had on the industry and technology as a whole, but I feel like more so than with “traditional” film, that and the reference to Toy Story immediately date the article. We know this is more than twenty years ago, and with the innovation that has followed, yes, the basic principles of remediation still apply, but the scope is limited by the sheer amount of content that has followed since. I would love to see a follow-up piece to this paper, honestly, addressing things such as the continued rise and fall of 3-D and where that factors in, or the struggle handheld systems are facing (as opposed to phone based games) in a world of immediacy.

Likewise, I would like to see how “_____ but better” could be applied to some of the more… toxic ways immediacy has taken hold and the contradiction that lays there. Take virtually any instance of social media: there is nothing more immediate than being able to spew your thoughts or photos of your pet for the entire world to see and digest as they see fit, which has ultimately led to harassment (cyber bullying) being easier than ever before. Being able to post your life for the world to see offers immediate opportunity for criticism and hate with virtually no consequences for the perpetrator. Take out the blank, and you have “abuse, but better”. And the call to immediacy means that most often, responses are immediate: one stands their ground and engages in toxic back and forth, or one accepts it and the abuse with it. There is the action to block someone, but with the immediacy of the internet being what it is, the aggressor can just go start another account and continue without missing a beat.

Again, this is something of a ramble: they’re just thoughts that rolled around in the back of my mind while I read the piece.

As for a solid, long-standing instance of remediation, the first thing that came to mind were Gorillaz, which actually began not long after when I assume the article was published. For the sake of utilizing media, this video provides a fairly solid introduction to what Gorillaz is about:

The actual explanation begins from 8:37, although they provide a decent sampling of old and new music before that point. As the video explains, Gorillaz is a virtual band driven by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett (who some of you might know from Tank Girl) along with a revolving door of collaborating artists. They all function under the guise of four fictional band members: 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle, and Russel. Each of these characters has their own backstory and has evolved over the course of time. Albarn, whose trademark vocals are one of the fixtures of an ever changing project that defies genre, rarely shows his face, even as he performs at live shows. He goes to great lengths to remove himself from the remediation of his work while Hewlett’s art stands at the helm. The intention behind the project, at least at its inception, are clearly stated by Hewlett himself: “If you watch MTV for too long, it’s a bit like hell – there’s nothing of substance there. So we got this idea for a virtual band, something that would be a comment on that.” In other words, they were lashing out against what they perceived to be the shallow nature of music by creating a completely artificial band.

Some other fun videos to watch:

A more recent video where Murdoc has been temporarily replaced by Ace from the Powerpuff Girls. You can’t make this up, haha.

A performance using holograms at the Grammys which transitions into a performance from Madonna.

To show a bit of a performance with Albarn cast in shadow, utilizing colored screens and lights as well as visuals: yes, he is performing it live, but I’d argue that by presenting icons or distractions, he provides immediate remediation by presenting it as though even in a live setting, the creative energy is flowing from another medium – hopefully that makes half as much sense coming through a keyboard as it does in my head. He could simply perform the music as he is, but he chooses instead to use Gorillaz as a conduit.

Also, since the article bought up multimedia art:

It’d be a shame not to bring this up, highlighting an animated Noodle dancing with the rapper – or the head of the rapper? – utilizing the actual human but also re-purposing his appearance for the sake of the video.

On a side note, as the original video I posted had mentioned, another big name digital musical act that comes to mind is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNrdGx69pCo

A character based on a software voice bank who has become exceptionally popular and puts on concerts as a hologram: I am not nearly as familiar with Hatsune Miku as I am with Gorillaz, although in my experience, she is less an explicit social commentary and more of a marketed product. She is a pop idol, but ‘better’ and much more accessible to her fans; she is something that can be consumed on stage at a concert or at home to the needs of her audience, whether to produce with her, idolize her, fetishize her, or something else entirely. Still, it’s an interesting example of remediation, especially when her digitally created voice is utilized to create entirely new music.

Hello. My name is Coral Amethyst Kopetz, and this is a blog. I am entering the final semester of my MA program is Contemporary Asian and Asian American Studies. I taught English in Japan for two years as part of the JET Program, and I work full time in a tutoring center off campus. My first experience with the internet was purely text based, on a computer with an orange and black monitor. I am dating myself horribly with that bit of trivia, but it’s interesting to think how far things have come in a rather unassuming span of time. I also like cats. I have a particularly fluffy one named Puff.